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SEO while designing the website and continuous SEO

What's the difference between SEO while designing/developing a website (ie, setting up a website so it is crawled by search engines) and the SEO that people talk about that needs to be viewed analyzed and changed all the time?

I don't have a ton of money to spend on SEO right now but I do want to make sure my website is set up by an SEO expert (if possible) so when I do have money to spend on SEOthe website is set up properly to work with more advanced forms of SEO.

I guess I don't understand where you can draw the line (if forced due to money constraints) between SEO in the beginning and continued SEO.

What do I need to look for with SEO and the design of my website. How do I get some type of SEO without breaking the bank??

4 Responses

In the initial stages its more about site architecture. This would encompass things like a correct URL structure, easy navigable site content, the distance each page is from the home page.

Your best off initially doing as much as you can yourself as this will bring the final price down. Do you have a sitemap yet? This can be a list of the pages that you need on your site in the structure that you want them on your website. So home>services> or home>products.

You could also source images that you want on your site, again the designer wont have to purchase them.

You could also decide on your meta description for the home page and ideally every other page.

Set yourself up a gmail account and make sure you add your website to webmaster tools and analytics.

Setup your Google plus page and Facebook page.

If you do all of theses things your well on the way to bringing the final costs down and also learning a lot more about how you can maintain your own website.

You'll need to start thinking about a content marketing strategy so you can keep fresh content on your website.

I think you recognize that there is a difference between seo and web development and also understand each should know that a little about each others work. This is why SEO companies hire web guys as well as marketing and seo folk. A web guy needs to understand the basics of SEO and not step on their toes while developing and a SEO needs to understand some basic web development issues.

I think an article on the difference of roles of seo folk and web development folk would be a good read.

SEO is an ongoing process and never ends. There is always content, analysis and search engine changes that needs to be managed.

Web development is more of an this is what you asked for so here it is type of deal. However, since SEO never ends, then web development should be readily available to make any needed changes.

Understand, content is key, offering something that nobody else is, and everybody wants to copy is the main goal, this is where web development / content writers come in. Getting this work seen by the masses is where SEO comes in.

Whenever I develop a website, I include "basic SEO" as a must for all websites. in essence, you need to make sure that your website is coded according to the W3C standards and has all the meta tags filled in properly etc.

If you have a low budget, try the following:

Develop your website in WordPress - out of the box it covers most initial SEO elements

Install the Yoast SEO plugin - a quick Google search will explain

Keep a blog/news section on your website

On going SEO is the key to ranking well, but the above will set you up nicely.

Good luck.

PS - SEO should be considered as an investment, rather than a cost. If spending $1,000/month on SEO returns you $10,000/month in sales, then why wouldn't you invest?

This can also further divided in two different parts depending on your budget and goals. Like if you are a simple local business then one way to go with SEO while development is to make sure that website is building currently from Navigation, Content, links, hosting and domain point of view. Other way to go is to have pre promotional plan to engage the target audience even before the website go live and at the same time making sure that website is fit from all development and on-page areas.

Continuous SEO

In this SEO service you expect results, you expect to get yourself on top of search engine from the desired key phrases and get leads and sales for the business out of it. There is no time limit to it but usually one can expect to start seeing results within 4 to 6 month of time (depending on niche and industry)

I believe you should go for One time SEO, with or without the promotion plan is up to your business strategy and budget for SEO.

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